A person watching television may have access to a large selection of television programming. Such television programming may be available across multiple channels and may include scheduled programming and on-demand programming. An electronic programming guide (EPG) may be used to view current and upcoming television programming. In addition, various devices exist that can be used to receive and record television programs. In recent times, devices known as personal video recorders (PVRs) or digital video recorders (DVRs) have become commonplace. PVRs/DVRs use a hard drive to record digital data that represents a television program. Various optical media and other forms of memory can be used to record television programs or digital representations thereof.
A user of such television programming equipment can encounter a number of difficulties in managing television programming. A user may be more interested, or solely interested, in one or more portions of certain programs, rather than being interested in viewing the entireties of the programs. If a user finds a particular program that may contain certain portions of interest, the user may have no choice but to watch the entire program, waiting for the portions of interest, and/or set the program to be recorded. With a recorded program, a user may not know when a portion of interest is to occur during the program, if at all. For example, a user may only be interested in viewing scoring plays leading to touchdowns in a particular football game. The user must spend time and effort searching for particular portions of interest within the recorded program. Typically, a viewer is able access different portions of a recorded program by scrolling forward or backward through the program stream, or by specifying a time to jump to in the stream. Such linear navigation and searching is time-consuming and can involve an unacceptable amount of trial and error.
Thus, there is a need for television programming management that addresses one or more of the foregoing problems in a convenient manner for a user. These and other needs are addressed by the present disclosure.